Save You
by sdbubbles
Summary: Hanssen finds Jac, vulnerable and broken after an encounter with a man on AAU, and finds out why this encounter affected her more than all the other violent incidents with patients.


**A/N: Ugh, I'm exhausted but I just had to post this. It kinda came about when I was listening to "Save You" by Kelly Clarkson, hence the title of the fic. I love that song! I am SO tired :( but I dyed my hair, and I love it! It was this strange not quite blonde but not quite brown colour, but now it's dark brownish red, and I love it so much! Anyway, rant over!**

**Sarah x**

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><p>Hanssen entered the Darwin consultants' office expecting Jac to be there, ready to make a snide remark about him or Sahira. Except she wasn't there. At least, that's what his first thought was. But, as he turned to leave, he heard a quite sniff from behind Jac's desk. Curious, he went around the table to investigate. Only he found that the noise wasn't from behind the table; Jac Naylor was sitting <em>under<em> her desk, crouched like a child. It rather took him by surprise.

She hadn't heard him enter, so she jumped when she lifted her head and found Hanssen staring down at her. He slowly knelt down next to her. She hastily tried to wipe away her tears, but she could not get rid of the red eyes tear-stained cheeks that were evidence to her upset. She fully expected Hanssen to tell her to grow up and act her age. But he did no such thing. Instead, he shocked her. "What's wrong, Jac?" he sighed, his eyes showing a concern that she had grown to mistrust from all who expressed it.

"I'm being stupid," she admitted. He raised his eyebrows at her, his way of telling her to spit it out. She huffed, not wanting to reveal to Hanssen just how broken she was. But his stare cracked her, much to her dismay and disbelief. "Sacha called me down to AAU for a consult earlier. Just as I was leaving, there was this patient, drunk off his arse, high on God only knows what. He pinned me to the wall by the throat, told me I had to discharge him. Sacha and Frieda pulled him off me," she explained, never looking at him, never betraying the anguish that experience caused her.

"I never thought of you as one who would let even that affect you," he commented. "Obviously, I was wrong. Though, from what I've heard, he is not the first to try and hit you. So why has he affected you like this, but none of the others who have attempted to hit you have even brought out any emotion in you?" he questioned softly.

"Yes, other people have tried to hit me. Patients, relatives, doctors, nurses...and I usually earned it by being a total cow. But the throat," she said, the rest of her explanation catching in her throat. "I hate it when people touch my neck. Nobody has held me by my throat like that for years," she told him.

He gave her a strange look, one that mingled sympathy with suspicion and concern with a real care for her. Contrary to popular belief, he was no hard as nails robot who could not even comprehend human emotion. He felt love and hatred; he had had more than his fair share of pain and anger and torment when he was much younger. His past taught had him to lie exceedingly well. So it was with much regret that he wiped the remaining tears from Jac's pale face. "Who was the last person to take you by the throat? In a way so threatening that they actually reduced you to tears like this?" he added.

She looked up at him, wondering how to answer that question. There was no way around the truth. What was the point in lying to him, anyway? He was like a human bloody lie detector. There was no way he would believe her if she lied. She had lied to him before, and she was sure he knew, even though he said nothing to her about it. "When I was eleven," she began, "my dad got angry with me. He had me against the wall, with his hand around my throat, and he told me he hated me. After that, I never saw him again. The last thing he ever said to me was that he hated me and he wished I'd never been born."

Henrik shook his head in dismay; well, that would explain a lot of things, at least. He had taken note of her attitude problem, of how she would be cocky and full of it in front of anyone who would listen...but he had seen her alone sometimes, and she often wore an expression of mixed pain, regret and hatred, directed at either herself or someone he could not see. "People are strange when they start drinking and taking drugs. It magnifies their personality," he explained to her. "If someone has a short fuse, they will be even more quick tempered if they're taking drugs or alcohol. People say it changes their personality, but it really just lets you see what they're actually capable of," he concluded logically.

"Tell me about it..." she said, sarcasm evident only slightly in her voice. She sounded defeated, as if her memory had finally got the better of her. "My dad was an alcoholic, and he had a bad cocaine and heroin addiction," she revealed, finally take part of her solid brick wall down to the last person on the planet she expected to. "He really was just a total and utter head case."

"You know, Jac," he began, extending a hand to her, so he could help her to her feet. "Nothing you tell me will ever find its way around the hospital. I'm not the sort to start spreading rumours just to see you squirm." Once she was on her feet, he gently brushed her hair from her face and wiped away the last of her tears. She slowly nodded, accepting that promise at face value. He could see the ghosts in her eyes, tormenting her. He knew how suddenly a memory could come back, and a drink and drug addict on AAU with an anger problem who resorted to violence probably served as a trigger for her, which did not help matters at all.

He lifted her chin softly to make her look at him properly. She looked in pain right now, and he knew that memory would not go away on it's own. "I sometimes wish that I could save you," he admitted. "If I knew how, I would try and save you."

She allowed him a tiny smile and replied, "Who knows? Maybe one day you'll figure it out." He smiled just a little at her. She seemed to know that she needed someone to help her, which was at least a start. "I'd better get back on the ward before Greg starts one crisis or another," she sighed. She touched his chest lightly and told him, "Thank you."

"It's no trouble. Just remember I'm here, won't you?" he reminded her, and, just before she left the office, she nodded and smiled at him. Maybe she was wrong about him; he wasn't as hard and cold and calculating as he would have people believe. He was, in fact, capable of emotion and understanding; he just never let it stand in the way of finding the truth and getting the right answer. And he wanted to save her. That was the first time that anyone told her that they wished they could save her. Maybe somebody did care...

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><p><strong>Hope it was OK!<strong>

**Please leave a review and tell me what you think!**

**Sarah x**


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